The invention relates to a device for loading pipette tips that have been positioned in a flat into an upstanding pipette rack for use in the laboratory.
In recent years, the use of pipettes and pipette tips has become widespread because of the requirements to maintain sterile or aseptic conditions while conducting various laboratory tests. This usage occurs both in the medical testing laboratory, wherein fluid samples taken from human beings are tested in various laboratory procedures, and extends to the biomedical and bioengineering laboratories where research is done in advanced areas of biology and the like.
The requirement to maintain an aseptic condition is paramount in that contamination of any sort in the biological laboratory can result in improper findings relating to the particular area being investigated. In the medical field, it is even more important as the tests performed may very well result in having a lasting impact on the patient upon which the tests were performed. In the last ten or fifteen years, the requirement for tests for HIV or Human Immunodeficiency Virus, has put even more severe pressure on medical testing laboratories. A false positive test, of course, results in severe hardship on the patient, while a false negative test would not only have impact on the patient, but could result in more widespread disease. From the laboratory technician's standpoint, contact with contaminated specimens that are being tested is, of course, of vital concern as the laboratory technician could suffer from the very disease that he or she is attempting to investigate should contamination become widespread.
Accordingly, laboratories have reached the point that laboratory equipment, particularly the interface of the equipment and the sample, is simply not handled by a human being after sterilization.
Pipettes and pipette tips are used, of course, and have been used for a number of years, to obtain small, measured samples of whatever is to be tested. Until about 20 years ago, pipettes were a single entity made of glass, and were cleaned and sterilized after each use. About 20 years ago, the plastic pipette tip and a mechanical pipettor came on the market and rapidly achieved widespread use. The single pipettor used a pipette tip approximately 2 to 21/2 inches long that is tapered in its form so that it would fit on a tapered end of the pipettor. The pipettor has a piston action that creates a suction within the pipette tip so that fluids can be drawn up into the pipettor. The advantage of the mechanical pipettor is that the plastic tip can be thrown away as that is the only area that the sample touched. Since great numbers of pipette tips are used, these pipette tips are usually sold in racks. Pipette tips racks appeared in the market concurrently with the pipette tips, but always presented a problem of how to load the pipette tips into the racks. While methods have been devised to load tips into the racks, the concern for the environment has caused a movement in the laboratories to reuse pipette tip racks which, in the past, were thrown away once they were empty. Accordingly, it has become the practice of the laboratories to buy racks loaded with pipette tips and as the racks are emptied, pipette tips sold in bulk are reloaded into the racks by hand.
The manual loading of pipette tips is tedious and time-consuming. Thus, in recent months, the manufacturers of pipette tips have attempted to utilize schemes for loading pipette tips into the trays for use in laboratories.
The requirement for a tray is present because the present pipettors are multiple-channel pipettors; that is, they mount either eight or twelve pipette tips at a time so that eight or twelve samples can be taken concurrently. The rack sits on the laboratory bench and the pipettor is forced down onto a row of pipette tips contained in the rack. The rack usually is formed with eight tips across and twelve tips lengthwise. A de facto standard among pipettor manufacturers dictates the spacing between the pipette tips and the rack.
The present reloading devices are cumbersome and appear to save only a small percentage of plastic in their attempt to resolve the reuse of pipette tip racks.
The present invention reduces the use of plastic considerably more than the existing racks so that the user can buy pipette tips loaded in a flat and then, by using a specially-designed device, load those stacked pipette tip flats into conventional racks for use on the laboratory bench.
It is an object of this invention to provide a loading device for pipette tips that will enable the user to load tips into conventional racks that are found in the marketplace.
It is another object of this invention to reduce the use of plastics in the manufacture of pipette tips and pipette tip racks.
It is still another object of this invention to provide a device that will load multiples of pipette tip flats into a series of pipette tip racks.
It is also an object of this invention to provide a specially configured rack and flat for use with the loader.